Even Seneca, the philosophic instructor of Nero’s youth, had fallen under his imperial pupil’s displeasure. Nero had no use for Seneca’s moral precepts and felt that he was no longer helpful to him in the affairs of State. They were also sharers in too many guilty secrets for Nero to care for his presence. An attempt was made to involve him in a charge of treason brought, with truth, against Calpurnius and others. This charge was not proved against Seneca, but it was made the most of at court. Not long after this the Prefect Burrus died, and his successor, Tigellinus, was no friend of Seneca. He inflamed the emperor’s covetousness for Seneca’s enormous wealth, which then, he said, was throwing into the shade the splendor of the imperial household. He also represented Seneca as a rival to him in poetry and eloquence. All these arguments prevailed with a heart already full of hatred.

So an order was sent to Seneca that he must die. It was received without alarm. As time was refused him wherein to remake his will, he said to the friends around him that he would bequeath to them the example of his life. He checked their tears and asked them where were their precepts of philosophy and the fortitude that their studies should have taught them? Did they not know the cruelty of Nero? Was it not to be expected that he would make an end of his master and tutor after murdering his mother and his brother? He begged his wife Paulina not to enter upon an endless sorrow. The veins of his limbs were then opened that he might bleed to death, a process that had to be accelerated by a vapor bath. During his lingering distress he conversed with those attending him. When Seneca passed away, Nero, though feeling a grim satisfaction, had really lost the best counselor he ever had.

SENECA

In many of his writings, this great philosopher rose to a lofty height of ethical insight and discrimination. He seems to have been truly anxious to raise the moral tone of society. No man up to his time had apprehended more clearly than did he that moral light with which God is ready to light every man that cometh into the world. No man wrote better of sincerity, courage, contentment, justice, kindness to others even to the weakest slave, mercy to the wicked, the beauty of unselfishness, and the mind’s possible superiority to its environment. He was a great expounder of natural religion as studied by his observation and by his conscience. Here, for example are a few of his maxims:

If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault.

We shall be wise if we desire but little.

If each man takes account of himself and measures his own body he will know how little it can contain and for how short a time.

Man is born for mutual assistance. You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

We are members of one great body.—Let him who hath conferred a favor hold his tongue about it.

Man’s best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. The Universe, the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the intellect, which was created to observe and admire, are our special and eternal possessions.

Such examples might be culled in great numbers from his writings. He seems at times to have been an earnest seeker after God. He declared that God did not dwell in temples made of wood and stone; that He did not delight in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His creatures; that men must believe in Him before they can approach Him, and that the truest service for Him is to be like unto Him. Some of his sayings approach the lofty precepts of Christ and His apostles. He is frequently quoted with approbation by early Christian writers. Yet his precepts differ from the Scriptural teachings in the fact that some of them are merely rhetorical and superficial. Others are fragmentary and inadequate. They are not winnowed from all chaff. At their highest level also they simply emphasize the demands of the moral law without offering to man any help for attaining to holiness other than what his own heroic decision may furnish. In their searching quality some of them are of a type so Pauline that many have thought that he and Paul, his contemporary, must have been well acquainted. There is said to have been a tradition to that effect as early as the fourth century. Indeed, some early Christian thought he was doing a good service to write a book that he called “Conversations between Seneca and Paul.” Its spuriousness is now generally admitted. But we naturally ask: Is it likely that Seneca knew anything of Paul?

On one hand, we may answer on general principles that a man in the high position of Seneca would not be likely to come into contact with despised and persecuted people, such as the Jews (and especially the Christians) then were. Most stoics would rather repel such company superciliously. On the other hand, we know that Paul had been tried in Corinth by Marcus Annæus Gallio, Seneca’s brother, and that at Paul’s arrival at Rome he was put under the charge of Burrus, the prefect of the Prætorian Guard, who was Seneca’s friend. It is possible that through one of these, especially the latter, the philosopher may have heard of the apostle and in the course of his philosophic inquiries may have gone to hear him in disguise or listened to reports of his preaching, which was causing a stir among the Jews. He may thus have used ideas the source of which he would not deign to acknowledge. Whether this was true or not, it is probable that Paul and Peter were before long much respected by some members of the Annæan family to which Seneca belonged. Lanciani tells us that in 1867 an inscription was found in a tomb at Ostia such as is here reproduced.

While it is clearly a pagan inscription, shown by the invocation letters D . M (Diis Manibus,—to the gods of the lower regions,—) Marcus Annæus, the father, who placed the inscription, seems to have been named for Paul, and the Marcus Annæus, the “dearest son,” whom it commemorates, to have been named for both Paul and Peter. The occurrence of the two names together

D . M
M. ANNÆO
PAULO . PETRO
M. ANNÆUS . PAULUS
FILIO . CARISSIMO